Nathaniel Dourif Friedman (born 6 August 1977) is an American technology executive and investor. He served as chief executive officer (CEO) of GitHub from 2018 to 2021 and was chairman of the GNOME Foundation. As of 2025, Friedman is head of product at Meta Superintelligence Labs, a board member at the Arc Institute, and an advisor to Midjourney. He has also been a prominent investor in Artificial intelligence companies through funds and grant programs.
Early life and education
Friedman graduated from St. Anne's-Belfield School in 1995. In 1996, while a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he befriended Miguel de Icaza on LinuxNet, an IRC network Friedman had created to discuss Linux. As an intern at Microsoft, he worked on the IIS web server. At MIT, Friedman studied computer science and mathematics, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1999.
Career beginnings and Ximian
In 1999, Friedman co-founded Ximian (originally International Gnome Support, then Helix Code) with de Icaza to develop applications and infrastructure for GNOME, a free software desktop environment. The company was acquired by Novell in 2003. At Novell, Friedman served as Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source until January 2010. There, he launched the Hula Project, which open-sourced components of Novell NetMail. During his tenure, Novell migrated 6,000 employees from Microsoft Windows to SUSE Linux and from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org. His final project before departure was SUSE Studio. During a sabbatical, Friedman created and hosted a podcast called Hacker Medley with former Ximian employee Alex Graveley.
Xamarin and GitHub leadership
In May 2011, Friedman and de Icaza founded Xamarin, with Friedman as CEO. The company provided commercial support for Mono, a free software implementation of Microsoft's .NET stack, and marketed a cross-platform SDK for mobile and game console developers. Microsoft acquired Xamarin in 2016.
In June 2018, Microsoft announced its $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub, with Friedman, then a Microsoft corporate vice president, becoming GitHub's new CEO. He assumed the role on October 29, 2018. During his tenure, GitHub rapidly introduced products including GitHub Copilot, GitHub Codespaces, a native mobile app, GitHub Advanced Security, GitHub Sponsors, and a new GitHub CLI. Friedman also acquired six companies, including NPM, Semmle, Dependabot, and PullPanda. He stepped down as CEO in November 2021.
AI investing and Meta
Friedman co-founded California YIMBY in 2017 to address housing shortages. In 2023, he created nat.dev, a web interface for popular large language models. Alongside Daniel Gross, he invested in AI through C2 Investments and ran an AI grant program providing funding and Microsoft Azure credits. During the Silicon Valley Bank run in March 2023, Friedman supplied capital to multiple startups. In June 2025, he joined Meta Platforms to co-lead Meta Superintelligence Labs with Alexandr Wang, overseeing AI-driven products and applied research.
Personal life
Friedman married Stephanie Schatz in 2009. They have a daughter and have lived in Menlo Park since 2022, moving from San Francisco after a home invasion.